lucky officer,
commanded for the Prince in Walcheren. He had attempted by various
hastily planned expeditions to give employment to his turbulent soldiery,
but fortune had refused to smile upon his efforts. He had laid siege to
Middelburg and failed. He had attempted Tergoes and had been compelled
ingloriously to retreat. The citizens of Flushing, on his return, had
shut the gates of the town in his face, and far several days refused to
admit him or his troops. To retrieve this disgrace, which had sprung
rather from the insubordination of his followers and the dislike which
they bore his person than from any want of courage or conduct on his
part, he now assembled a force of seven thousand men, marched again to
Tergoes, and upon the 26th of August laid siege to the place in forma.
The garrison was very insufficient, and although they conducted
themselves with great bravery, it was soon evident that unless reinforced
they must yield. With their overthrow it was obvious that the Spaniards
would lose the important maritime province of Zealand, and the Duke
accordingly ordered D'Avila, who commanded in Antwerp, to throw succor
into Tergoes without delay. Attempts were made, by sea and by land, to
this effect, but were all unsuccessful. The Zealanders commanded the
waters with their fleet,--and were too much at home among those gulfs and
shallows not to be more than a match for their enemies. Baffled in their
attempt to relieve the town by water or by land, the Spaniards conceived
an amphibious scheme. Their plan led to one of the most brilliant feats
of arms which distinguishes the history of this war.

The Scheld, flowing past the city of Antwerp and separating the provinces
of Flanders and Brabant, opens wide its two arms in nearly opposite
directions, before it joins the sea. Between these two arms lie the isles
of Zealand, half floating upon, half submerged by the waves. The town of
Tergoes was the chief city of South Beveland, the most important part of
this archipelago, but South Beveland had not always been an island. Fifty
years before, a tempest, one of the most violent recorded in the stormy
annals of that exposed country, had overthrown all barriers, the waters
of the German Ocean, lashed by a succession of north winds, having been
driven upon the low coast of Zealand more rapidly than they could be
carried off through the narrow straits of Dover. The dykes of the island
had burst, the ocean had swept over the lan